


perennials

by blackeyedblonde



Category: True Detective
Genre: Angst, Family Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophia dies in May. A Sunday.</p><p>Rust and Claire, with their daughter and without.</p>
            </blockquote>





	perennials

**Author's Note:**

> Many of you will recognize this and have read it here before; a few weeks back I took it down (a long and uninteresting story) but have decided that I'd rather keep it here for archiving reasons. This is the work in its original form (other than changing Sophia's age to 2 in compliance with canon), though I should probably mention again that it was written as part of a tumblr prompt on Father's Day. Apologies for any confusion.

Sophia dies in May. A Sunday.

He’d been fixing the sink in the bathroom. On his back, head under the cheap chipboard-face vanity, fixing the fucking sink. Claire had been out front trying to plant flowers in what little patch of yard they had. _Perennials_ , she’d said, as if she actually knew shit about plants. _Since they live more than two years._

To think they’d been something of a family, then. Something abstractly akin to the word _domestic_.

Rust had tried it on for size, once, not long after they brought the baby home. Drew out each syllable, whistling soft around the s. It hadn’t tasted right. Hadn’t tasted real.

Maybe that had been a sign.

———

For the first few weeks the baby seems to cry all night, wailing some kind of reverberating primal scream out into the ether until Rust or Claire get their hands on her, walking in endless circles around the nursery with her tucked soft and warm up underneath their chin. She won’t quiet if they dare sit down, and by the third week home Rust wonders how he hasn’t worn a trench in the carpet yet.

The clock strikes two one night and she goes off like a siren. Claire gets up this time, a disheveled pillar of silence draped in bruised shadow, and pads down the hall. Rust counts off the steps it takes to reach the crib, mentally goes through the motions of cradling the baby, waits a few moments, and is left to wonder why she’s still crying.

Three minutes later he gets up and walks into the nursery. Claire’s hair is a wild halo of dark curls, shoulder of her nightgown pulled down with one pale breast bared in offering. The baby won’t nurse, though, and she tells Rust so when he holds his hands out to take her.

“Go back to bed,” he says over the pealing cries. “I’ll stay up.”

The usual routine of walk-bounce-shush falls flat and he holds a finger to her neck, indulging some vague curiosity, just to feel the pulse fluttering butterfly-soft under her skin. It thrums steady but she feels too-warm to the touch, buttoned up in some long-sleeved flannel nightie, and he sets her down on the changing table to work her arms and legs out of the holes.

When Claire gets up a few hours later she finds Rust propped up in the gliding rocker, dozing in the weak half-light with the baby cradled close to his chest. Both of them are stripped down to nothing but shorts and a diaper, bare skin draped over in a thin cotton blanket, Sophia’s tiny fist resting on that blue sigil painted permanent over his heart.

She takes a picture before she wakes Rust, and he’ll crack open an eye when the flash goes off, mumble something like, _what the hell you doing, Claire?_

Later, it’ll be one of the few things that goes missing when he’s gone.

———

It never even occurs to him that it’s Father’s Day.

He’d been stone fucking drunk since noon, spent most lucid moments throwing wads of money at wary-eyed corner store clerks until they’d ring him up and watch him stumble off to polish a few off in the cab of his truck. There’d been some seedy piece of shit bar at some point, floor so sticky his shoes practically sucked off the concrete, and he’d had no fucking business driving but he’d driven anyways. To a vacant lot next to a boarded-up grocery store, to another liquor joint, to hell and back, and then eventually home, dragging ass into the kitchen a little before midnight with liquor and nicotine seeping hot from his pores.

Claire is halfway through a pack of cigarettes and slumped against the kitchen table when he walks through the door. A familiar image these days, pitched through foggy glass.

“How’d you get home?” are the first words out of her mouth. Then, getting a good look at him, “Jesus fucking Christ, Rust, you _drove?_ God knows—”

“There is no God,” Rust hears himself say, flat and simple like a dull blade thrust deep, and maybe some part of Claire agrees nowadays but that’s just enough to trip the hair trigger. That’s all it takes.

There’s a fight because there always is. Nobody gets hit, but a casserole dish from the neighbors goes flying off the counter and shatters on the tile, the evening’s only casualty. Claire’s doing, but she’s locked behind the bedroom door before the echo even fades out through the walls.

Rust cuts his hands open as he grabs the shards without any care and lobs them in the direction of the trash can. Ruby-dark blood mixes with green bean casserole and he wasn’t crying before but he’s sobbing now, sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor in a mess of blood and food and broken glass.

Green beans had always been Sophia’s favorite.

———

The tricycle had been a Christmas present. Rust picked it out himself, even added some of those goddamn streamers to the handlebars, pink and purple things that sparkled in the sun.

Sophia is two but she picks it up like old hat, speeding down the driveway in a blur of pink trike and honey-blonde curls, squealing away with Rust loping hot in her wake.

He’ll catch her at the edge of the drive and haul her and the tricycle back up to the house, sit down cross-legged on the concrete with her squirming in his lap.

“What’re the rules, Sophia?” he asks, soft but firm. “What do I always tell you?”

She blows out a little sigh that sounds like something he’s heard coming from Claire. “No play in the street,” she recites, “cuz it’s _dangerous._ ”

“Dangerous,” he repeats. “And are you gonna ride in the street?”

Sophia makes to push away but he holds her tight with a hand hooked around her chest, little heartbeat thrumming in a steady whisper under his palm. _“Hmm?”_ he hums against the top of her head while she squirms.

“No, Daddy,” she says, sagging back against him with a huff. “I won’t.”

“Good,” he says, letting her loose. “Now go on and play, we’ll have to go in for supper soon.”

Sophia clambers up out of his lap and gets back on her tricycle, riding in a wide arc before coming to a stop at Rust’s side. They’re at perfect eye level when he’s sitting on the ground, and she wrinkles her nose as she leans in to plant a wet little kiss against his cheek.

Rust laughs and reaches out to grab her but she’s already pedaling away, cast over in the pale orange light coming off the setting sun.


End file.
